A chronological exploration of literary or film milestones in geek culture from 1964 on. Excuse the ADHD as I discuss other things as well.

1982: The Art of….. Graeme Williams?

I will preface this with saying that drawing is not my strong suite. This is not something I normally do, but today I sat down and drew my own piece of art. I’ve been thinking about taking a crack at my own art piece for a while, and I thought there was no better day than a rainy
holiday Monday.

I picked the first character I wanted to draw – The Rocketeer. I don’t know why, but I had convinced myself that he was 1983. I’m glad that he wasn’t. No other characters appeared initially in 1983 that I wanted to draw. But his actual appearance was 1982, which is a much better year. E.T. first came out, as well as Matt Wagner’s Grendel, plus the first issue of Marvel Graphic Novel which was the Death of Captain Marvel.

I ended up nixing Grendel pretty quickly from my mind, and initially thought about having the image of the moon from E.T. with the silhouette of them flying in the bike, but replacing Elliot with The Rocketeer. Captain Marvel’s grave would be in the distance. I also thought about having the moon blend into the tombstone, but I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I eventually moved on from them flying at all, because the image is a silhouette and I wanted them in colour. So I decided to have them at the grave, and thought it would be funny if The Rocketeer was taking off in fear.

The first action was practicing E.T.s face and The Rocketeers helmet. This, I felt, was a good start.

My next goal was to practice the bodies. The Rocketeer’s body and speed effect wasn’t too difficult, but E.T. proved extremely difficult. He has odd body proportions, and is naked and wrinkly. I couldn’t do it. I tried a few times, but to no success. I also tried drawing him in a box and blanket, but I couldn’t master that either. I decided to put him in Elliot’s red hoodie and that seemed to be a good solution. With each new attempt I felt like the results were getting worse and worse. It was time just to get into the final piece.

This is a little more of my practicing attempts.

Once I was ready, I started working on my good copy. Still a little more trial and error, and I had to trace a little bit of what I felt I had already gotten right. Then I inked it, and coloured it in. The colouring especially makes it look like a child’s drawing, but I’m not a professional, and I put a good deal of effort into it, so I’m pretty happy with the result.

Since they are at Mar-Vell’s I added a couple other tombstones from other deaths that year – Elektra, who was killed by Bullseye in Frank Miller’s Daredevil, and real life author Phillip K. Dick, who wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was adapted into Blade Runner, which also came out it 1982.

All told it took me about 4 hours, several pencil crayons and about a million pieces of paper!